Federal prosecutors have charged two people, Paris Baker and Michael Sullivan, with running a fraudulent payment and identity theft scheme that allegedly generated millions of dollars in unauthorized bank transactions. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York says the pair created businesses that existed only on paper and used stolen identities to make their operation look legitimate.
Charges Center on Paper Companies and Stolen Identities
According to a post from the U.S. Attorney SDNY
, Baker and Sullivan allegedly created businesses that existed only on paper and used stolen identities to make their scheme appear legitimate. The same post states that the two allegedly initiated millions of dollars in unauthorized bank transactions, part of what prosecutors describe as an effort to steal from unsuspecting victims and exploit financial systems designed for legitimate commerce.
A separate Department of Justice release narrows the alleged figure, stating that Baker and Sullivan are charged with a fraudulent scheme to initiate approximately $3.7 million in unauthorized debits of third-party accounts, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
Prosecutor Vows to Keep Targeting Financial Fraud
U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald framed the case as part of a broader enforcement push, saying his office is committed to rooting out fraud in all of its forms. “Our Office is deeply committed to rooting out fraud in all of its forms,” McDonald said, per the SDNY post, which also tagged the New York FBI.
Part of a Wider Pattern of Payment Fraud Cases
The SDNY has brought similar cases in recent memory. A July 2026 announcement from the same office described the arrests of three people, including a former bank employee, in a scheme accused of posing as bank customers to carry out identity theft, as detailed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. In March 2025, the office also announced charges against six defendants accused of working together from 2021 to 2025 to steal from the government, banks, and individuals using fake or stolen identity information alongside fraudulently obtained or counterfeit checks.
Fraud involving shell companies and unregulated payment channels has drawn scrutiny beyond New York as well. The investigative outlet OCCRP has reported that some scam call centers rely on unlicensed payment providers that were not licensed and did not appear to correspond to real legal entities in most cases, with payment networks sometimes built on accounts at major banks held by proxy-owned companies. OCCRP's reporting found that internal call-center documents showed some of these providers charged fees of 10 to 17 percent, and that one such operation took in more than $35 million between 2022 and 2025. Nothing in the available evidence ties that broader ecosystem directly to the Baker and Sullivan case, but it illustrates the kind of infrastructure that fraud schemes like this one can be built on.
The scale of fraud complaints nationally has also been climbing. The Federal Trade Commission's Sentinel database received 6.5 million reports in 2024, a figure that includes fraud reports, identity theft reports, and other consumer complaints. The Baker and Sullivan case's current procedural status, including whether any arrests have occurred or how the defendants are responding to the allegations, remains unclear based on the materials released so far.
